Wednesday, September 25, 2013

The Pulp Magazines Project has added 5 new issues of 2 classic pulp titles to its full-text digital archive. These include the Jun. 15, 1935 and May 1949 issues of Adventure, feat. Cleopatra's Promise, by prolific pulp author Talbot Mundy (Jun. 15, 1935); and the May 1936, Mar. 1937, and Jul. 1938 issues of Blue Book, feat. short stories by H. Bedford Jones, along with William L. Chester's Tarzan-inspired series, Kioga. There are now a total of 235 full-text magazines available on the site.

For news and updates to the site, along with a complete list of issues posted, check out our News & Updates page here.

Monday, August 26, 2013

With the start of the new semester, the Pulp Magazines Project returns with regular monthly updates to its digital archive. In the final weeks of August, we've added to the project's growing collection of pre-1923 pulps with new issues of The Black Mask and Top-Notch Magazine:

Included are the Nov. 1920 and Aug. 1922 issues of The Black Mask---which feature Murray Leinster's "The Vault" (Aug. 1922)---and the Feb. 1912, Mar. 1913, and May 1 1915 issues of Street & Smith's Top-Notch Magazine---featuring Part I of Johnston McCulley's Force Inscrutable (Mar. 1913).

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Publishing legends The Black Mask (1920), Weird Tales (1923), and Amazing Stories (1926) are considered so "extremely rare and valuable" that the U.S. Library of Congress houses its collection of 277 issues in Washington, D.C.'s Rare Book and Special Collections Division---along with the personal libraries of Presidents, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, and one of only three known perfect copies of the Gutenberg Bible. With its latest addition of 4 issues of The Black Mask (Aug. & Sept. 1920; Dec. 1921; and Apr. 1922), the Pulp Magazines Project has made all 3 classic titles available together---for the first time---in high-quality, cover-to-cover digital editions.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

In the 1920s and '30s, The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (est. 1873) prosecuted a long war against the so-called "girlie" pulps, a burgeoning field of mildly risqué pulp-paper magazines featuring sex-themed stories, scantily clad women, and sometimes nude photography.

In 1925, the organization attacked as indecent the magazines Artists and Models and Art Lovers' Magazine.

In 1930, the NYSSV forced pulp publisher Harold Hersey to suppress depictions of violence and lawlessness in his new line of gang pulps.

In 1934, the organization raided magazine shops to confiscate four new magazines with the titillating titles Real Boudoir Tales, Real Temptation Tales, Real Forbidden Sweets, and Real French Capers....

For 2013, let's hope it all goes better for these long lost, and much maligned step-children of popular 20th century print culture history:

The Pulp Magazines Project has posted 8 new scans, feat. representative issues of the snappy, spicy, & girlie varieties (shown above) of semi-slick or pulp-paper magazines from the 1930s and 1940s.

About the Project

The Pulp Magazines Project is an open-access digital archive dedicated to the study and preservation of one of the twentieth century's most influential literary & artistic forms: the all-fiction pulpwood magazine. The Project also provides information on the history of the medium, with biographies of pulp authors, artists, and their publishers.